The Thirst: Harry Hole 11

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Well, then,’ Finne said. ‘To start with, I’ll have served my sentence on the first Saturday of March next year, so it’s too late to get a reduction that makes much difference. And I was taken outside a couple of weeks ago, and you know what? I wanted to get back here. So, thanks but no thanks. Tell me how you’re doing instead, Hole. I heard that you got married. And have a bastard son, yes? Do you live in a safe place?’

  ‘Was that all you had to say, Finne?’

  ‘Yes. But I shall follow your collective progress with interest.’

  ‘Me and Valentin?’

  ‘You and your family. Hope to see you in the welcoming committee when I’m released.’ Finne’s laugh turned into a wet cough.

  Harry stood and gestured to Wyller to bang on the door. ‘Thanks for sparing some of your precious time, Finne.’

  Finne raised his right hand in front of his face and waved. ‘See you again, Hole. Nice to be able to talk about f-future plans.’

  Harry saw his grin flit back and forth behind the hole in his hand.

  15

  SUNDAY EVENING

  RAKEL WAS SITTING at the kitchen table. The pain, drowned out by the noise and distraction of urgent jobs, became harder to ignore whenever she stopped. She scratched her arm. The rash had barely been noticeable yesterday evening. When the doctor asked if she was urinating regularly she had answered yes automatically, but now that she was more aware of it, she realised that she had hardly peed at all in the past couple of days. And then there was her breathing. As if she was out of shape, and she definitely wasn’t.

  There was a clatter of keys at the front door and Rakel stood up.

  The door opened and Harry came in. He looked pale and tired.

  ‘Just popped in to change clothes,’ he said, stroked her cheek and carried on towards the stairs.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked as she watched him disappear upstairs to their bedroom.

  ‘Good!’ he called. ‘We know who it is.’

  ‘Time to come home, then?’ she said half-heartedly.

  ‘What?’ She heard footsteps on the floor and knew he’d taken his trousers off, like a little boy or a drunk man.

  ‘If you and your great big brain have solved the case …’

  ‘That’s just it.’ He appeared in the doorway at the top of the stairs. He was wearing a thin woollen sweater and leaning against the door frame as he pulled on a pair of thin woollen socks. She had teased him about that, saying that only old men insisted on wearing wool all year round. He had replied that the best survival strategy was always to copy old men, because they, after all, were the winners, the survivors. ‘I didn’t solve anything. He chose to reveal himself.’ Harry straightened up. Patted his pockets. ‘Keys,’ he said, and vanished into the bedroom again. ‘I met Dr Steffens at Ullevål,’ he called. ‘He said he’s treating you.’

  ‘Really? Darling, I think you should try to get a few hours’ sleep – your keys are still in the door down here.’

  ‘All you said was that they’d examined you?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  Harry came out, ran down the stairs, and hugged her. ‘Examined is past tense,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Treating is present tense. And, as far as I know, treatment is what happens after an examination comes up with something.’

  Rakel laughed. ‘I came up with the headaches myself, and that’s what needs treating, Harry. And the treatment’s called paracetamol.’

  He held her out in front of him and looked at her intently. ‘You wouldn’t hide anything from me, would you?’

  ‘So you’ve got time for this sort of nonsense, have you?’ Rakel leaned into him, forced the pain away, bit him on the ear and pushed him towards the door. ‘Go and get the job finished, then come straight home to Mummy. If not, I’ll 3D-print myself a home-loving man made out of white plastic.’

  Harry smiled and walked over to the door. Pulled his keys out of the lock. Stopped and looked at them.

  ‘What is it?’ Rakel said.

  ‘He had the key to Elise Hermansen’s flat,’ Harry said, slamming the passenger door behind him. ‘And presumably also to Ewa Dolmen’s.’

  ‘Really?’ Wyller said, taking the handbrake off and rolling down the drive. ‘We definitely checked every key-cutter in the city, and none of them has made any new keys to any of the buildings.’

  ‘That’s because he made them himself. Out of white plastic.’

  ‘White plastic?’

  ‘Using an ordinary 3D printer costing fifteen thousand kroner which you can keep on your desk. All he needed was access to the original key for a few seconds. He could have taken a photograph of it, or made a wax impression of it, and used that to produce a 3D data file. So when Elise Hermansen came home, he had already locked himself inside her flat. That’s why she put the security chain on, she thought she was alone.’

  ‘And how do you think he got hold of the keys? None of the buildings the victims lived in used a security company, they each had their own caretaker. And they’ve all got alibis, and they all swear they haven’t lent any keys to anyone.’

  ‘I know. I don’t know how it happened, just that it did happen.’

  Harry didn’t have to look at his young colleague to see how sceptical he was. There were hundreds of other explanations as to why Elise Hermansen’s safety chain had been on. Harry’s deduction didn’t rule out a single one of them. Tresko, Harry’s poker-playing friend, claimed that probability theory and how to play your cards according to the rulebook was the easiest thing in the world. But that what separated smart players from the not-so-smart was the ability to understand how their opponent was thinking, and that meant dealing with so much information that it felt like listening for a whispered answer in a howling storm. Maybe it was. Because through the storm of everything Harry knew about Valentin Gjertsen, all the reports, all his experience of other serial murders, all the ghosts of previous murder victims he hadn’t managed to save over the years, a voice was whispering. Valentin Gjertsen’s voice. That he had taken them from inside. That he had been inside their field of vision.

  Harry pulled out his phone. Katrine answered on the second ring.

  ‘I’m sitting in make-up,’ she said.

  ‘I think Valentin has a 3D printer. And that could lead us to him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Shops selling electronic equipment register their customers’ names and addresses if the price is above a certain amount. There’ve only been a couple of thousand 3D printers sold in Norway. If everyone in the team drops what they’re doing, we might be able to get a good overview within a day, and have checked ninety-five per cent of the buyers within two. Which would mean we were left with a list of twenty buyers. Fake names or aliases, we’d find out if we couldn’t see them in the population register at the stated address, or called people to find that they denied buying a 3D printer. Most shops selling electronic equipment have security cameras, so we can check anyone suspicious using the time of the purchase. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t have gone to the shop closest to where he lives, so that would give us an area to search. And by releasing with the security camera images, we can get the public to point us in the right direction.’

  ‘How did you come up with the idea of the 3D printer, Harry?’

  ‘I was talking to Oleg about printers and guns and—’

  ‘Drop everything else, Harry? To focus on something that occurred to you when you were talking to Oleg?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘This is precisely the sort of alternative angle you’re supposed to be exploring with your guerrilla team, Harry.’

  ‘Which still only consists of me, and I need your resources.’

  Harry heard Katrine burst into laughter. ‘If you weren’t Harry Hole, I’d already have hung up.’

  ‘Good job I am, then. Listen, we’ve been trying to find Valentin Gjertsen for four years without succeeding. This is the only new lead we’ve got.’

  ‘Let
me think about it after the programme. It’s going out live and my head’s full of things I need to remember to say and not say. And my stomach’s full of butterflies, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Any tips for a television debutante?’

  ‘Lean back and be relaxed, genial and witty.’

  He heard her chuckle. ‘The way you used to be?’

  ‘I was none of those. Oh yeah – be sober.’

  Harry put his phone in his jacket pocket. They were getting close to the place. Where Slemdalsveien crossed Rasmus Winderens vei in Vinderen. And the lights turned red. They stopped. And Harry couldn’t help looking. He could never help it. He glanced at the platform on the other side of the metro track. The place where, half a lifetime ago, he’d lost control of his police car during a chase, sailed across the track and hit the concrete. The officer who had been sitting in the passenger seat died. How drunk had he been? Harry was never made to take a breath test, and the official report said he’d been in the passenger seat rather than driving. Anything, for the good of the force.

  ‘Did you do it to save lives?’

  ‘What?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Working at Crime Squad,’ Wyller said. ‘Or did you do it to catch murderers?’

  ‘Hm. Are you thinking about what the Fiancé said?’

  ‘I remember your lectures. I thought you were a murder detective simply because you loved the job.’

  ‘Really?’

  Harry shrugged as the lights turned green. They carried on towards Majorstua and the evening darkness that seemed to be rolling towards them from the cauldron of Oslo.

  ‘Let me out at the bar,’ Harry said. ‘The one the first victim went to.’

  Katrine was in the wings looking at the little desert island in the middle of the circle of light. The island was a black platform holding three chairs and a table. In one of these chairs sat the presenter of The Sunday Magazine, who was about to bring her on as the first guest. Katrine tried not to think about the sea of eyes. Not think about how hard her heart was beating. Nor think about the fact that Valentin was out there right now, and that there was nothing they could do about that, even though they knew full well that it was him. Instead she kept repeating to herself what Bellman had told her: to be credible and reassuring when she said the case had been solved, but that the perpetrator was still at large, and that there was a possibility he had fled the country.

  Katrine looked at the director, who was standing between the cameras and the island wearing headphones and clutching a clipboard, shouting that there were ten seconds to go before they began the broadcast, then she started counting down. And suddenly a silly thing that had happened earlier in the day popped into her head. Possibly because she was exhausted and nervous, possibly because the brain takes refuge in silly things when it ought to be concentrating on things that are overwhelming and terrifying. She had called in to see Bjørn at Krimteknisk to ask him to fast-track analysis of the evidence they had found in the stairwell, so that she could use it on television to make herself more convincing. Naturally there hadn’t been many other people there on a Sunday: those who were there were all working on the vampirist murders. Perhaps this emptiness was the reason the situation had made such a strong impression on Katrine. When she walked straight into Bjørn’s office, as usual, a woman had been standing by his chair, almost leaning over him. And one of them must have said something funny, because both she and Bjørn were laughing. When they turned towards Katrine, she had realised that the woman was the recently appointed head of Krimteknisk something-or-other Lien. Katrine remembered Bjørn mentioning her appointment, and remembered thinking she was far too young and inexperienced, and that he should have got the job. Or rather: Bjørn should have taken the job, because he had actually been offered it. But his response had been classic Bjørn Holm: why lose a pretty decent criminal forensics expert to gain a pretty bad boss? Looked at that way, fru or frøken Lien had been a good choice, because Katrine had never heard of anyone called Lien who had excelled in any case. When Katrine had presented her request for quicker results, Bjørn had calmly replied that that was up to his boss, she was the one who decided what was a priority. And something-or-other Lien had given her an ambiguous smile and said she’d check with the other forensics officers and see when they might have the work finished. So Katrine had raised her voice and said that ‘checking’ wasn’t good enough, that the vampirist murders were the priority just now, that anyone with any experience could understand that. And that it would look bad on television if she was forced to say that she couldn’t answer because the new head of Krimteknisk didn’t think it was important enough.

  And Berna Lien – yes, that was her name, and she did look a bit like Bernadette in The Big Bang Theory, short with glasses and breasts that were too big for her – had replied: ‘And if I prioritise this, do you promise not to tell anyone that I don’t think the child abuse case in Aker or the honour killings in Stovner are important enough?’ Katrine hadn’t realised that the pleading note in her voice was fake, until Lien went on in her normal, serious voice: ‘Naturally, I agree with you that it’s extremely urgent if it can prevent more murders, Bratt. And it’s that – and not the fact that you’re appearing on television – that weighs most heavily. I’ll get back to you within twenty minutes, OK?’

  Katrine had merely nodded and walked away. She went straight to Police HQ, locked herself in the toilet and wiped off the make-up she had put on before heading off to Krimteknisk.

  The theme music began to play, and the presenter – who was already sitting up – sat up even straighter as he warmed up his facial muscles with a couple of exaggeratedly wide smiles that he wasn’t likely to need given the subject matter of that evening’s programme.

  Katrine felt her phone vibrate in her trouser pocket. As lead investigator, she needed to be accessible at all times, and had ignored the demand to switch her phone off altogether during the broadcast. It was a text from Bjørn.

  Found a match for fingerprints on the front door of Penelope’s building. Valentin Gjertsen. Watching TV. Break a leg.

  Katrine nodded to the girl beside her who was telling her again that she should walk towards the presenter as soon as she heard her name, and which chair she should sit in. Break a leg. As if she were about to go onstage. But Katrine realised that she was smiling inside anyway.

  Harry stopped inside the door of the Jealousy Bar. And realised that the sound of a noisy crowd wasn’t real. Because, unless there were people hiding in the booths along one wall, he was the only customer. Then he caught sight of the football match on the television behind the bar. Harry sat down on one of the bar stools and watched.

  ‘Beşiktaş–Galatasaray,’ the bartender smiled.

  ‘Turkish teams,’ Harry said.

  ‘Yes,’ the bartender said. ‘Interested?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘That’s fine. It’s all crazy anyway. In Turkey, if you support the visitors and they win, you have to rush home at once so you don’t get shot.’

  ‘Hm. Religious differences or class?’

  The bartender stopped polishing glasses and looked at Harry. ‘It’s about winning.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Of course. My name’s Harry Hole, I’m … I used to be a detective with Crime Squad. I’ve been brought back in to—’

  ‘Elise Hermansen.’

  ‘Precisely. I read in your witness statement that you had a customer who was wearing cowboy boots at the same time Elise and her date were here.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything else about him?’

  ‘Not really. Because as I remember it, he came in just after Elise Hermansen and sat in that booth over there.’

  ‘Did you get a look at him?’

  ‘Yes, but not long enough or carefully enough to give much of a description. Look, you can’t see into the booths from here, and he didn’t order anything before he was suddenly gone again. That happens fairly
often – presumably they think the place is a bit too quiet. That’s the way with bars – you need a crowd to attract a crowd. But I didn’t see when he left, so I haven’t really thought about it. Anyway, she was murdered inside her flat, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘You think he might have followed her home?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, at least.’ Harry looked at the bartender. ‘Mehmet, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  There was something about the guy that Harry liked instinctively, which made him decide to come straight out and say what he was thinking. ‘If I don’t like the look of a bar, I turn at the door, and if I go in, I order something. I don’t just sit in a booth. He might have followed her here, then – once he’d read the situation and realised she was likely to be going home without the guy soon – he may have gone to her flat and waited for her there.’

  ‘Seriously? Sick man. And poor girl. Speaking of poor sods, here comes her date from that night.’ Mehmet inclined his head towards the door and Harry turned round. The Galatasaray fans had drowned out the entrance of a bald, rather overweight man in a padded gilet and black shirt. He sat down at the bar and nodded to the bartender with a stiff expression on his face. ‘A large one.’

  ‘Geir Sølle?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Preferably not,’ the man said with a hollow laugh, without changing his expression. ‘Journalist?’

  ‘Police. I’d like to know if either of you recognise this man.’ Harry put a copy of the photofit picture of Valentin Gjertsen down on the bar. ‘He’s probably had extensive plastic surgery since this was produced, so use your imagination.’

  Mehmet and Sølle studied the picture. They both shook their heads.

  ‘You know what, forget the beer,’ Sølle said. ‘I just remembered I need to get home.’

  ‘As you can see, I’ve already poured it,’ Mehmet said.

  ‘The dog needs walking – give it to our police officer here, he looks thirsty.’

  ‘One last question, Sølle. In your witness statement, you said she told you about a stalker who had been following her and threatening men she was with. Did you get the impression that was true?’